American Cinematographer - February 2015 - 20

Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, NZCS lines up a Red Scarlet on a slider.

float the balloons above the set."
"Superhuman missions" were par
for the course on Blackhat, particularly for
what Mann calls his "splinter units."
Throughout production, Mann's trusted
longtime camera operators John Grillo and
Duane Manwiller - who served on the
show as second unit co-directors of photography - were dispatched to shoot action,
effects, stunts or other material, as necessary. For example, a major shootout in Hong
Kong's financial district called for an RPG to
blow up a car, but Chinese authorities made
it clear that no explosions would be permitted in the heart of the city. Undeterred,
Mann decided to shoot all of the action
surrounding the explosion, with all of the
camera positions carefully noted so they
could be re-created elsewhere. Grillo then
headed to Jakarta to shoot the explodingvehicle elements in a parking lot, using
Phantom high-speed cameras. He got the
elements and returned to Hong Kong in
time to rejoin the main unit as it finished the
remainder of the sequence.
Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour
offered another challenge. There, the filmmakers staged a sequence with a rigid
inflatable boat speeding through "a forest
of anchored ships and barges," Dryburgh
says. Shot at dusk, the action was captured
with handheld cameras on the picture boat
as well as a Libra head rigged on another
20

February 2015

inflatable boat. "We also had camera positions on board a freighter where the bad
guys rendezvous, and the freighter was
rigged with work lights, as were some of
the surrounding vessels," the cinematographer adds. "Plus, we had [two 20Ks and
two 12-Light Maxi-Brutes] mounted on a
tug that could quickly maneuver to give
hard side- and backlight as required by our
rapidly shifting camera setups. It was a little
chaotic, sometimes frightening, as we raced
across black water amongst the anchored
ships, but the result is an exhilarating
sequence."
Grillo, Manwiller and camera/
Steadicam operator Roberto De Angelis
routinely used Easyrig harness-support
systems and a tried-and-true "bag of tricks
like slings that we wrap around our shoulders to hold the cameras under our armpits
for handheld shots," Grillo relates.
One of the most useful tools on the
shoot was the P+S Technik Skater Scope
periscope lens system, which was crucial for
putting cameras into tight spaces and, more
generally, for achieving a close intimacy with
the actors. The production used the system
with Zeiss Standard Speed T2.1 primes.
"We really wanted to use the intimate
camera techniques that Michael and Dante
[Spinotti, ASC, AIC] developed on The
Insider," says Dryburgh. "In particular, we
wanted to follow characters closely over the
American Cinematographer

shoulders and so forth. The Skater Scope is
a compact periscope system, and it allowed
us to get incredibly close focus, to do a shot
on somebody's ear, so that [the character] is
in focus and the rest of the world is totally
out of focus. That's very much a Michael
Mann technique, and we used it both for
macro close shots and unconventional
handheld shots."
During production, digital-imaging
technician Greg Gabrio applied a basic lookup table supplied by Company 3 - where
the final digital grade would later be
performed - and created a color decision
list for each shot, based on Mann and
Dryburgh's preferences, using Pomfort's
LiveGrade software. All media was backed
up on set by digital loader George Ballenger
using a Codex Vault system, and the physical mags and CDL files were delivered to
Encore's Near-Set Services, who set up a
local dailies operation wherever the production traveled. At the suggestion of ASC
associate and supervising digital-intermediate colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld, all imagery
was monitored on set in DCI P3 color space,
on 24" Flanders Scientific LCD monitors.
"We set Michael up with a 50-inch
monitor in his hotel suite," says Gabrio. "He
watched dailies every night, off an
encrypted hard drive. With help from a
stenographer, he generated notes each day
for everyone on his team, with marching
orders for the next day."
Looking back on the production,
Mann notes, "It was grueling, but I think of
it more as a challenge. If you are a rock
climber, you get more excited about a 5.8
climb than a 4.8 climb. It's like that. The
energy, commitment, and very positive and
aggressive attitude that was there on the
first day was there to the same degree on
the last day."

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT, XT-M; Red Scarlet;
Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 7D;
Vision Research Phantom Flex; GoPro Hero3
Vantage Film Hawk V-Lite 1.3x Anamorphic,
Angenieux Optimo, Zeiss Standard Speed,
Canon EF

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American Cinematographer - February 2015

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